Why Are Kids Sitting At Their Desks In The Middle Of The Road?

Some schoolkids might be happy if their school were knocked down.

Not in Nairobi.

On May 15, a group of primary school students sat at desks in the center of a main road to block traffic. Along with their parents, they were protesting the demolition of their school, the Kenyatta Golf Course Academy, over the weekend.

According to a BBC article, the schoolchildren chanted: "We want our school, we need to study in school."

The reason for the demolition was a bit hard to pin down. Foreign Policy writes: "It appears the school was destroyed without any prior warning to parents — who had already paid their children's tuition for the year. The school was on land that belonged to a church, and the school was destroyed without warning on Saturday over a land dispute, though exact details of the dispute weren't made immediately clear."

"The demonstration ended peacefully," the BBC notes — a marked contrast to a demonstration by schoolchildren in Nairobi in 2015. Those youngsters were protesting the fact that their playground had been sold to a developer. At that time, says the BBC, "police fired teargas to disperse protesting schoolchildren."

Copyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.